Huxton:
Commander Adriatic Huxton opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on the cold CIC floor, staring at the metal plated ceiling, which was comfortingly lit by the normal LED spotlights. His head was throbbing and his stomach churned. The CIC was completely silent except for a beeping from somewhere out of his sight. "Computer network rebooting" a female voice said. Huxton winced as the sound grated against the inside of his skull.
He seemed to be the only living thing on the bridge.
He forced his lips apart, "hello?" No response. The console next to his head began humming. Huxton groaned, and sat up. Instantly the stabbing pain in his head flared and vomit came rushing up his throat. He clenched his teeth and choked it back down, leaving and acidic taste in his burning mouth. He grabbed the corner of the console and pulled himself to his feet. The room blurred, and then settled.
His officers and the civilians were strewn across the floor of the CIC. Several were stirring faintly. Marlay was curled in a fetal position next to her chair, visibly trembling. A groan drew Huxton's attention to the station next to his. Cage was slumped against the desk, one arm twisted beneath him at an angle too wide to be natural. His face twisted into a grimace. Huxton walked over on trembling legs. "Major."
Cage looked up. "You know, those bloodshot eyes really do make you look insane." Huxton smiled.
"Lets joke over liquor shots later, right now we've got a ship to save." He extended his arm. Cage grabbed his hand and he pulled him up.
"Ah!" Cage cried as his broken arm came loose. He grabbed it and quickly said "I'm fine, what do you need?"
"Find out what that beeping is, then give me a damage report." Cage nodded and hobbled away. The CIC's occupants were awakening and getting to their feet. Several cries of pain erupted from amidst them. A little boy barely elementary school aged burst into tears over his whimpering mother. Huxton blocked them out. He grabbed the phone and called engineering. "Bridge to engineering, good job."
"Thank you" Kelso replied. Huxton heard the whoosh of high-pressure liquids and shouting in the background.
"Where is Radin?"
"Radin is being carried out, when the FTL spool activated it burned his hands."
There wasn't time to express sympathy. "What's your department's status?"
"Extremely fracked, with all due respect commander. A couple tylium pods burst and we've got a fire going, so everything is getting hosed down, we might need to vent if it gets out of control. The reactors went into safety and the ship is running on battery power for now. The FTL spool partially melted when activated, its going to be at least forty-eight hours to get it operational."
"I'll leave you to it, best of luck." Huxton hung up.
"Commander!" he looked over at Cage. "Its DC, we're venting atmosphere. Here's the damage report." Huxton tensed in anticipation. "There were over forty missile strikes on the ship, at least two of them nuclear. Our main radio network is offline with the CIC being the only way left to coordinate. We're venting atmosphere in sectors eight, fourteen, nine, seven and two, and electrical fires are raging in sectors nine, ten, fifteen, and twenty. Power is intermittent throughout everything in back of sector six and engineering is going to need a few hours to get the lines operational." He paused and his eyes dimmed just a little. "The port hangar pod has been ruptured and is venting atmosphere at a rate that will leave us in a vacuum in half an hour. There's almost eight hundred people trapped in there including Sare, and only a few of them are coming out."
Huxton ran through his options in his head. It took him a few precious seconds to decide on the right one. "Seal off the port hangar pod and let it decompress."
"Wait!" Marlay said. She was slumped against her chair, knees under her in a weak attempt to stand. "Sare's in there, you can't."
Cage patted his pendant, a relic from his hometown on Gemenon. "Sealing it off, and may the gods forgive us." He typed in a command. Marlay collapsed, covering her face.
At each entrance to the port pod massive gears grinded to life. Two-meter thick bulkheads slammed into place, forming an airtight seal. An immense cloud of gas blew out of the gaping chasm in the hangar pod, carrying with it debris and still moving bodies. Air gone, flailing at nothingness as life vanished behind, lungs rupturing, burning, a spinning view of the stars, nothing.
"Hangar pod sealed. That should buy us an extra half hour," Cage said.
Huxton looked at Marlay and felt a moment of sympathy for the twenty-year old, who had come to see Sare as a father figure since her arrival straight from Picon fleet academy four months ago. "On your feet Lieutenant, you're needed." She nodded and pulled herself into her chair. Then she remembered the bloody body and looked around. Aelia was sprawled on her back and bleeding from a dent in the side of her skull. Rachel was crouched beside her squeezing her hand and sobbing.
Huxton quickly gave his orders. "Cage, have damage control shut down the power in the sectors where there's fires and focus on regaining hull integrity. How bad are the breaches?"
"Most are medium to small size. Sector eight has a tear fifty feet wide though, nothing we have can fix it in time."
Huxton exhaled. How many people am I going to have to kill today? "DC has twenty-five minutes to evac eight, then they seal it off regardless of who's still inside."
"Yes sir." The shaken tour guide and the two marines who had been guarding the CIC meanwhile were guiding the civilians off the bridge. Ensign Marakon had pulled the red lever next to his station at the back of the CIC. Huxton doubted any medical assistance would get to the half a dozen people collapsed in various states of injury on the floor for some time.
Huxton turned to Marlay. She kneeling besides a teenage girl bleeding from a bad head wound, pressing her jacket against the wound. "Lieutenant, when medical gets here they'll take care of her, get on your station. Internal communications are down, and your station is the only comm hub left on the ship. Our different DC teams and officers are scattered and possibly fighting for their lives with no way to report in. Get on your station and start coordinating their communications."
Marlay shook her head at a second teenage girl sobbing next to her, and leapt up. "Yes sir." Huxton saw the terrified look in her eyes as she took her station and put on her headset. He felt a twinge of pity.
"Oh, and Cage, get cyber maintenance on finding out how the cylons shut us down, if they're still alive that is." Shortly after his radio crackled. "Thank you Lieutenant" he said to Marlay, and grabbed it. "This is the Commander, who am I speaking to?."
"Good to here you Hux," Colonel Nessela said. "DC operations chief was in his quarters at the time we jumped. His quarters were blown into space with a good chunk of sector eight. I am taking operative command of any DC teams I can round up."
Huxton looked at Cage, who confirmed the update with a nod. "Understood, gods speed."
Alenko:
Alenko zippered up the bulky orange fire suit over his fatigues and grabbed a plasma cutter off the wall of the fore engineering station. After pulling the civilians out of the leaking forward observatory and sealing it off his squad, and dozens of other marines ship wide, had been recruited to augment the weakened DC teams. There were sixty people in this room readying up. The room had been intended to service over a hundred.
On his left Nessella pulled the helmet and oxygen mask over her red ponytail and snapped it into place. Her voice sounded tinny through the transparent mask. "As of now there are maybe two hundred of us ship wide, so the Commander is prioritizing objectives. We focus all our efforts on the hull breaches. Engineering will take care of the fires. Everyone to my left, head to sector two, a raptor and engineering team will be waiting n the outside when you get there." Twenty people fell under that jurisdiction. "Everyone to my right, come with me. We have twenty minutes to evacuate sector eight, then we seal it off."
The ship rocked suddenly and Alenko's grip tightened on his plasma cutter. "What was that?" he asked.
"I'll ask the Major, in the meantime, get your rears in gear before we're out of air!"
Alenko nodded to his eight-man squad. "Triple time boys." They streamed out of the chamber and down the Vindication's teeming spinal corridor. Nessella somehow squeezed to the head of their group.
She turned around; somehow not colliding into any of the wreckage and people they were weaving through. "Cage just vented the port magazine" she explained, and then turned back.
It took ten precious minutes for their group to thread their way through the confusion and debris to eight. The bulkhead they arrived at had been jammed partially open by a spear of rent metal.
They paused for a moment to catch their breath. "Alright, there's four more entrances, one squad take each" Nessella said. She motioned to Alenko. "Sergeant, you're with me." They shoved their way through and arrived in a nightmare of tangled metal and multiple bodies obstructing the corridor. A handful of small fires crackled. What was most worrying was the distant low moan of the wind being sucked out into space through a gaping tear in the Vindication's throat.
"She's bleeding out" Alenko said.
Beside him Corporal Sergev Belsinki turned to him confused. "What?"
Alenko pointed down the twisted corridor. "The cylons hit an artery, Vinny's bleeding out." Nessella pointed at the wreckage. Alenko and Belsinki raised their cutters and sliced a path through it.
The first room they investigated was sector eight's security station. Half a dozen marines and a crowd of civilians and crew were cowering inside they looked up when Alenko melted the doorframe and kicked it open. "We are sealing this sector off, everyone out!" he shouted. He heard several gasps of horror from those who understood, then they started moving. The crewmembers shoved, and in some cases carried the civilians and wounded out the door. The DC team continued inside. Alenko had thought there would be no survivors, but each new room they cut open revealed more people, pale and faces masks of fear.
"Time's up, lets pull out" Nessella said too quickly. There were still people streaming past.
An image flashed before Alenko: the Picon fleet exploding one ship after another. He looked up and said "Colonel, we can't just leave them here." He looked around for support and saw several nods from his squad.
Nessella glared at him. It only made her look more afraid than he was. "Sergeant, there are maybe another couple hundred people in here, there are at least seven thousand people on this ship who will begin suffocating if we don't seal it off now, so move out!" She grabbed him by the shoulder and propelled him back down the corridor with surprising force given his several inches and fifty pounds of muscle on her. Alenko's feet started moving as his brain struggled to form counterarguments. They returned to the exit, and Private Venko sawed away the beam holding the portal open.
Nessella's fingers wrapped around the door's metal frame. "Close it" she said softly to hide that her heart was breaking. Alenko and Belsinki grabbed the door and threw their weight against it.
A collective cry of "No!" rose up briefly from their people on the other side, then it was cut off as the door slammed into place and locked. Alenko felt a faint pounding on the door, but that quickly faded. He let his feet give out. He wasn't the only one who sank to the deck.
"We did the right thing," Nessella whispered. She keyed her radio. "All teams report in" she said. A moment later a smile cracked beneath the mask and she addressed the team. "We're good on all entrances, two should be sealed momentarily. Everyone, take five, then we've got more work to do."
It took them ten hours of fighting to restore power to all sectors and stabilize the Vindication. Alenko was one of the last back to the ready room. He saw most of his comrades sprawled on the floor in their soot cakes yellow suits, and joined them in passing out.
Huxton:
"What's Doctor Veris' latest casualty figure?" Huxton said to Cage.
Cage's square jaw clenched. "One thousand eight hundred fifty four dead including port hangar estimates, nine hundred sixty wounded, two thirds of them civilian."
Huxton went to his station and pulled a notepad and pencil out of his jacket pocket. "How many people were onboard last counts?"
Cage took a moment to fid the answer. "Eight thousand three hundred, four thousand crew, four thousand one hundred civilians, and two hundred liaisons for fleet week." Huxton ran one hand through his spiky black hair. On the pad he wrote 6446,
"Well, we saved the ship at least" he muttered.
"We did sir" Cage said. Huxton looked u at him. His clean-shaven dome was shining from the sweat on it and his normally energetic smile was a grimace. His broken arm was hanging limp by his side. It was noticeably deformed midway between his shoulder and elbow.
"Major, I think you've done enough, for today, you are relieved of duty, get down to the hospital and get that arm looked at" Huxton said.
Cage shook his head. "I respectfully request to remain on the CIC until a suitable replacement can be found." He gestured around. There was no command officer above the rank of Fifth Warrant officer in the CIC.
"Fine, as you were."
"I got a fix on our location" Navigator, Captain Grissom announced.
Huxton turned to the helm, located at the front of the pentagonal CIC. "Good, where are we?"
"We're fifteen light years from the edge of the Cyrannus system. Right now we're about a light year from the Caliban system and five light years from Nexus."
"That's bad. Could be worse actually, but that's bad" Huxton said. They could have jumped within sublight cruising range of the colonies, but they could also have jumped into Cylon space, or within the heliopause of the Tartarus system five light years from the colonies, where radiation from its blue sun would have cooked them within hours. "Plot a jump back to the colonies. Take us to the null space between the binary systems, in case we run into the cylons in this condition."
.
A few minutes later Cage's computer beeped. He read the new message and grinned. "Maintenance found the cylon weapon, take a look." Huxton looked over his shoulder. Scrawled across his screen were several lines of binary, then three words: "all systems deactivate."
"They sent us that?"
"Yes."
"That's a command, which means…"
"According to maintenance, the weaponwas a Trojan horse, embedded in the new Command Navigation Program. Once activated it enabled the cylons to take control of our computers, namely, telling them to shut down. This is the activation command."
"Can you remove it?"
"We'll have to remove the CNP and replace it with the old version, but it can be done."
"Do it then, and wipe down the entire computer core and take the network offline just in case the cylons got their virtual fingers on anything else. This is big, we have to warn the fleet about this."
"FTL communications would lead any cylons listening in back to us" Cage warned.
"I'm aware, and we are not in any state to fight." Right now he wouldn't have felt safe going up against a medium cruiser.
Marlay stepped forward and raised her hand. All attention went to her. "I can, I need a raptor and a relay transmitter. The raptor jumps a few light years away, the Vindication sends her a tightbeam FTL transmission, and she relays it to the colonies and jumps away. If the cylons track it they'll end up in the middle of nowhere."
"Good idea, I'll call Cage send someone down, Captain" Huxton said.
"Captain?"
"You're the new chief comms officer, that makes you Captain" Huxton said. He didn't expect Marlay to smile, which she didn't.
"Commander, I should show you this." She returned to her station, Huxton and Cage followed her. On her computer screen was a dossier on the twenty-one members of the Vindication's communications department including her. "I was trying to keep track of my people between handling internal communications," she said. Eighteen names from Sare down were marked as KIA and the other two were in the hospital.
Cage remembered a report three hours ago: electrical explosion in the primary antennae array, heavy fatalities. He put a hand on her shoulder. Her head drooped onto it. "Sorry" he whispered.
Alenko:
Alenko gave a gentle push to the bony shoulder of the elderly tourist at the head of the procession of civilians his squad was leading. "Here we are" he said, pointing to their barracks. The old man said something unintelligible, but thankful by its tone, and hobbled through. Alenko watched the twenty civilians enter, the last being a shell shocked and trembling woman in her early thirties. He waved his squad in after them.
"Well, this is it" he said, looking around at the ten meter by six meter room and its eight bunks. "Extra sleeping pallets and blankets are coming down from the quartermaster, so you can sit in our beds in the meantime."
"Thank you," several people whispered. Alenko saw a father with a stubbly beard lift his two small children, a boy and a girl, onto his own bunk.
He took a seat in one of the light blue overstuffed armchairs his squad bought and lugged in during a stop in Leonis eight months ago. "Belsinki, you have any food in that bottomless locker of yours?" he asked.
Belsinki rummaged through his locker with his sausage-sized fingers. "Nothing" the big man said in his deep voice.
"Uh, I have something" the father said. He pulled four foil wrapped packages out of his son's backpack and gave them to Belsinki. "Brought a couple of sandwiches along, but I figure you deserve them right now" he said. Alenko smiled.
"Thank you" he said. Belsinki divided each sandwich into halves and passed them around. Alenko sank his teeth into his first. "Mmm, corn beef!" he said.
"Is it just me, but do these sandwiches taste better just because we went through hell to earn them?" Venko asked. They all nodded. Corporal Ingrams tried to speak with his mouth full and sprayed breadcrumbs onto his shirt.
Alenko's thoughts went back to Picon. "How do you think the war's going?" he asked.
"The toasters got lucky at Picon, we're going to jump home just in time for the victory party" Venko said.
"No we're not. You saw what happened to our fleet. The same as us; they shut everything down, including the vipers. They were just hanging there in space like targets and the cylons were having a shooting exercise" Alenko said.
"If that happens to the entire fleet we're fracked" Belsinki said. Alenko shushed him and pointed to the kids. A smile appeared momentarily on his fat lips.
"I know" Alenko said. The ship shook slightly, and somewhere in the distance a keening alarm went off. All eight marine's hands went to the tools they had been carrying instead of rifles, but the alarms didn't spread to their sector
Alenko's thoughts returned to the people he'd left to suffocate. Their screams didn't leave him alone.
Marlay:
Marlay found herself in the back of a raptor strapped in next to the six-foot high rectangle of metal and glowing lights that was the FTL comm relay. "Set back there?" pilot 'Rango' asked.
"I'm good," she said.
"This is Raptor zero two two, requesting clearance to take off" his copilot 'Vendetta' said.
"Clearance granted, good flying" the LAS said.
The Raptor thrummed as its thrusters lifted it off the starboard hangar deck while its ground crew stepped back. Rango pushed the throttle forward and Marlay felt a pleasant tug as the craft accelerated down the hangar and into space: she'd always enjoyed flying.
As they flew away she turned in her seat to look at the Vindication. The battlestar had been a proud ship, with her perfectly curved, two-pronged shovelnose prow and elegant hull that sported dozens of powerful turrets. Now she was a cripple, her hull cratered and buckled and her back sagging.
"Poor Vinny, she never had a chance," Rango said sadly.
"Wait until we get her some drydock, she'll rack up a kill count longer than the Galactica's" Vendetta said eagerly. Marlay and Rango couldn't help but smile at the copilot's enthusiasm.
"Right, coordinates locked in, FTL drive spooling." The vanished in a flash of blue light
When it reappeared ten seconds later it had moved three light years closer to the colonies "We are in position. Lieutenant, you're up" Rango said.
Marlay keyed the relay and accessed a keyboard in the side.. 'We are in position' she typed out, entered the correct codes, and sent back the way they had come. The reply arrived a minute later in the form of a Kobol-priority message.
'She typed out the long string of coordinates that would broadcast it to every transmitter in the twelve colonies, and sent it.
"Message is away!" she said.
"Good, let's head back, entering jump coordinates" Rango said. The relay let out a high-pitched trill, indicating it had received a message. Rango stopped entering the coordinates and strained around in his harness to read.
Marlay's face went pale as she read the transmission. "Get us home, now please" she said. Rango pailed and obliged.
Huxton was getting his first moment of real peace in twelve hours when Marlay burst onto the bridge and went straight to her station. "Good job with the relay" he said, spinning his chair around to face her. She didn't acknowledge him. He noticed that her hands were shaking. "Something up?"
"Yes" she said in a small voice. She printed out a message and handed it to him. He looked it over once, and then grabbed the intercom.
"Attention please, this is commander Huxton" he began. Alenko and company looked up from the Triad game they had begun, wondering what further bad news there could be. Nessella and the DC crews stopped removing their gear to listen. In the overstuffed hospital the patients who could craned their necks to hear better over the screaming. Aelia sat up in her cot and put one hand over the bloody bandage on her temple. Rachel had been squeezing her other for the last hour. "Maybe its about Picon" Rachel said. "You think our families are okay?"
Aelia nodded. "Yeah, I hope." Her arms tingled as she imagined them wrapped around her younger sister and older brother.
Huxton took a deep breath and continued. "At twelve hundred hours-ten hours ago for those of you who have understandably lost track of time- a nuclear warhead with a fifty megaton yield was detonated over Caprica city by invading cylon forces. Additional detonations have been recorded in greater Caprica, Picon, Gemnon, and Tauron. Admiral Nagala has taken personal command of the fleet from the Battlestar Atlantia following the destruction of colonial military headquarters on Picon. This ship is carrying what is believed to be the only survivors of the fleet week celebrations. We are officially at war with the cylons."
"Oh my gods!" Aelia gasped. She and Rachel would remain frozen, hands covering their mouths in shock for a long time as they struggled to understand. Alenko buried his face in his hands and his squad had similar reactions. Cage's good hand went to his Gemmnon pendant and clutched it so tight the tips of the symbol drew blood.
Huxton wasn't done. "As of now we are stranded far from the home that needs her. I need every civilian to keep cooperate with enlisted personnel and stay out of thee way, and every enlisted man and woman to perform their duties the best of their abilities so we can repair the Vindication and enter what may be the fight for the survival of the human race. Huxton out." He dropped the intercom and returned to his seat.
He heard a harsh whisper from Marlay. "Lets hope we got that transmission off in time."
Huxton took out his pad and began scribbling out his battle plans for their return.
